Season 1, Episode 5 - The Boxtops XXVI - "The Secret Origin of Lynn Falls"
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By age 11, Lynn had been to the big city of Narragansett just once in her life. It was a few summers ago with her older cousin, who seemed to know more people and possess more money than what should’ve been possible for someone belonging to a family of Triple Kingdom immigrants living in a factory town. That would get him into trouble soon enough, but both at age 8 and age 11, Lynn couldn’t have possibly known.
And what a city Narragansett was! Her jaw slackened so far it nearly hit the ground when the train out of Pennacook rumbled over the Kendall Bridge and the Tower of Babylon appeared in full view over the nearby station, it’s giant Shenzenvision television playing advertisements for fancy fashions and clothing that was a far cry from Lynn’s raggedy, stitched-together hand-me-downs.
She held her cousin’s hand as they departed at Kendall Station. Lynn had a basic understanding that Pennacook was a town and Narragansett was a city, but to actually be there, subsumed in a mass of thousands of people at the huge station, it was a feeling like no other.
The music! It came out of little boxes called radios from that far-away land known as Asia.
The people! They spoke dozens of languages, dressed in fancy clothes, and moved at a pace far faster than Pennacook. None of them were covered in factory soot either!
The streets! Lynn had seen a few cars in Pennacook, but these ones came from another far-away land. Her cousin pointed out the differences between high-roller Brazilian and cheaper Argentine brands to her, but it was all foreign and exotic and wonderful and amazing to Lynn.
Her cousin struck a cigarette and gave her a tour of the district, taking her to clothing stores, ice cream stands, green parks and, of course, Cambridge University. The courtyards featured freshly cut grass and trees in full bloom, students hard at both work and play, tall brick buildings housing classrooms and dorm rooms behind them. Ivory-covered towers rounded out the skyline, and even from here Lynn could see the slick Tower of Babylon, wonderful patrol planes flying above it all.
Lynn sat on a bench, eating ice cream, watching bluebirds, while her cousin spoke with someone from Cambridge. When their conversation concluded, her cousin sighed and sat next to Lynn.
Lynn finished her ice cream. “I want to be just like you!” she declared, impressed with everything and anything about her cousin and this big-city lifestyle he lived.
Her cousin shook her head. “I’m living on borrowed time,” he simply declared, leaning back on the bench.
“Um...okay. I’m still gonna be just like you, though!”
Her cousin chuckled, and Lynn laughed along, and patrol planes flew overhead, white plumes streaking across the summer sky.
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“Um...” Audrey said back in the forest, scratching her head. “Does this have to do with your super-duper secret backstory?”
Lynn nodded. “Just providing context.”
Audrey still scratched her head.
“It's additional information so you can understand my point better.”
“Ah! What a great story-telling device!”
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Lynn wanted to be a lot of things over her youngest years. She wanted to be like her cousin in the big city; she wanted to be like her father in the factory; she wanted to be like her mother in the home, taking care of a huge family; she wanted to be like a brother who joined the Army, another cousin who became an electrician’s apprentice, another brother who worked at sea.
Lynn wanted to be just like someone else. She matched her footsteps behind her role models, following the path of someone who seemed far greater than she could ever be on her own.
At 11 years old, Lynn still felt torn by all these destinies, arriving at the age where the world slowly started to lose its luster as reality set in. Lynn realized she couldn’t be all those things; she could only be one. And since she was 11 years old, Lynn really wanted to know right then and there what she was going to be.
But since only she could make that decision, without following in someone’s footsteps, it meant that she spent long nights scratching her head and writing confused entries in her diary, a gift on her eleventh birthday by her cousin. By her twelfth birthday, she realized that would be the last gift he would ever give her. But that would be a later issue - the only issue at age 11 was figuring out what she was going to do with her life.
“It’s simple – you'll marry, settle down, and raise a family,” her Ma told her.
“Travel New England, see all there is to see,” her Pa suggested. “Then marry, settle down, and raise a family.”
“Just do something you like,” her cousin advised her on the last day she ever saw him.
As she sprinted through the streets of her hometown, Lynn supposed she did like a few things.
She liked Pennacook. The big city was amazing, but Pennacook was home. As she sprinted up dusty roads, passing by tenement houses, she smiled and waved at electric workers hanging up telephone wires for that new-fangled device, Military Police officers who would soon be departing as the local civilian police department took up its role in keeping law and order in the city, and a few older children who upturned their noses at a member of the Falls family.
She liked her family. All ten of her brothers and sisters, her Ma and Pa, her cousins and uncles and aunts and grandparents. The Falls had a reputation of being dirty in general, with the adults drunkards and the children considered rabble-rousing delinquents.
But we’re just kids! Lynn exclaimed in her head as she kept running. Sure, the Falls children occasionally got into (one-sided) rock fights with other Pennacook kids, graffiti-ed the schools and factories, and cheated at neighborhood softball games.
“But we’re just kids!” Lynn exclaimed, out loud this time, as she kept running.
“Shut it!” Frances Nolan yelled back at her, a ways back from Lynn, but still running just as fast as when the chase started. Despite her best efforts, Lynn had been unable to shake off the meanest girl in town, who had been hot on her heels for what seemed like an eternity.
Lynn gulped, yet the smile returned to her face as she kept running. Running was simple; no need to think, not even about your destination – you just go. That’s all there was to it. Just to give it your all and run with everything you had.
Unfortunately, the meanest girl in town also had just as much in her as Lynn did. Frances was the same age as Lynn, but Lynn was short for her age while Frances was tall and lanky, with harsh, angular features that, when combined with the blue dress she wore at church on Sundays, made Lynn’s stomach churn in excitement and her cheeks blush.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
But Frances also had one hell of a right hook and a mean streak to boot. All Lynn did to her on this summer morning was cross paths with her and accidentally make eye contact.
Okay, they crossed paths because Lynn and her siblings had bought eggs from a grocer and decided that, rather than bring them back home to their mother as requested, they would serve a much more rewarding and fruitful purpose in being thrown at the Nolan family car. It was Argentinian-made, much like the ones in the big city, making it the nicest car in Pennacook. Which also, of course, made it a perfect target.
The Lynn siblings hid along a grassy knoll on the northern outskirts of Pennacook when the car, billowing out smoke (typical of Argentine used cars), came into view, heading down the dirt road from the countryside into Pennacook. Six of the Lynn siblings gathered for the occasion; the older ones took charge, suddenly standing and firing right as the car rolled by them. They all missed, but when it was Lynn’s turn, she grinned as she struck the driver’s side door.
Unfortunately, Frances herself, sitting in the passenger seat, jumped out of the still-moving car (Argentinian used cars didn’t drive all that fast) and bounded after the culprit. Lynn gulped and started sprinting as her siblings dashed off and Frances scrambled up the knoll.
Lynn knew sibling solidarity would be no use here; it was every Falls for him or herself. Lynn leapt her way down the knoll, into a grass field, the smokestacks of Pennacook in the distance. As she sprinted through the grass, she could hear Frances yelling curse words behind her; Lynn had to grin because all those swears meant that Frances would be up all night saying prayers when she and all the other Pennacook kids went to Confession at church at the end of the month.
Of course, a long-term moral victory wouldn’t really lessen the pain of a short-team beating, and Frances was heck-bent on giving Lynn one. So, Lynn sprinted on, through the grass, through fields of flowers, until she arrived back in Pennacook, passing by the lone houses on the edge of town,the elderly shaking their heads and the younger ones laughing as Lynn raced by, Frances hot on her heels.
Lynn took Frances through hedgerows, through lawns and dusty streets, around factories and delis and bakeries. They darted between cars and Pennacook’s trolley system, the driver letting out a whistle as Lynn scooted past it. Lynn tried alleyways and sidestreets, ducking under laundry and jumping over neighborhood cats and dogs too lazy to move, but Frances kept up with her all the same. Now that they were back in town, Frances stopped swearing, but the intensity on her face was still there.
Despite it all, Lynn started laughing.
Running’s so easy. This is the only time I don’t have trouble choosing a path for myself. I just go where my feet take me.
All she needed to think about was the chase.
Lynn knew her hometown like the back of her hand. Unfortunately, she actually didn’t know the back of her hand all that well, so she ended up cornered in a sidestreet between two brick buildings that turned out to be a dead end.
Lynn tried to scramble up the wooden wall that blocked the end of the alley, but to no avail. She turned and gulped when Frances blocked the entrance to the alley, huffing and puffing with such an angry look on her face that she seemed capable of blowing a house made of straw, perhaps even wood, down to the ground.
Lynn held her hands up. “You wouldn’t…you wouldn’t hit a girl, right?”
Frances rolled up a sleeve. “I’d hit you, I’d hit your brothers, I’d hit your sisters or cousins or father or mother, I’d hit any priest or sailor or grandma or baby if I needed to.”
To put it mildly, an answer like that didn't bode well for Lynn's chances.
“Um…okay.”
Lynn took a few steps back, but with each step back, Frances took a step forward.
“I’m…I’m sorry!” Lynn called out. She felt her back hit the solid wall of wood behind her. “I’ll wash your car, I’ll do your chores, anything!”
Frances hocked a loogie and wiped her mouth as she advanced. She smacked one fist into an open palm, the sound echoing around the alleyway. “You play with eggs long enough…you get fried.”
Lynn sank to her knees, covered her face, and in general, cowered in fear as Frances stood over her, ready to give her her just desserts-
“Hey!” A voice called out from the entrance to the alleyway.
Lynn exhaled in relief, because she recognized that voice and the long blonde hair from the town's annual festivals., Standing in the entrance to the alleyway was none other than Mackenzie, the Mayor of Pennacook’s daughter!
Frances recognized her as well and frowned. She looked down at Lynn, scaring her enough for the cowering in fear to return, then looked back at Mackenzie.
“This is none of your business,” Frances bluntly told her.
Mackenzie, as tall as Frances, stood firmly with her hands on hips. “Anything that happens to the kids in Pennacook is my business! They’re all my friends!”
Frances kept quiet, looking back and forth between Lynn and Mackenzie, then hocked another loogie. “Friends,” she muttered as she walked out of the alleyway, leaving Lynn alone. "Yeah right."
Frances took one last look at Mackenzie, then stuffed her hands in her pockets and walked off.
Lynn felt the fear and adrenaline subside in her as she continued sitting there, catching her breath. She opened her mouth to thank the richest girl in town, but then realized that Mackenzie had already walked off.
Lynn exited the alleyway, sighed in relief upon seeing that Frances really had left for good, then looked around for Mackenzie. The alleyway connected to one of the main streets in Pennacook; being a summer's afternoon, a number of people were out in front of the stores that lined the street, while others lounged around on the stoops of brick buildings.
Lynn was short, so finding Mackenzie presented a tall (heh) order for her. Since Frances went left, Lynn assumed Mackenzie went right; she darted through the people on the streets, slipping past the trolley moving slowly down the avenue once more.
There! Lynn spotted Mackenzie rounding a corner onto another street. She rushed after her, arriving on that street when Mackenzie was further down the sidewalk.
"Hey!" Lynn called out, but Mackenzie kept walking. Lynn kept calling out for her, but Mackenzie kept on walking. With a shrug, Lynn simply kept on following her, trying to walk exactly in her footsteps. Down the street they went, Mackenzie in a summer dress, Lynn in rough-and-tumble laborer's clothes, separated by about ten feet as they moved past grocers and mechanics and all sorts of stores.
Lynn realized that, as Mackenzie walked, everybody around her gave her a wide berth. Lynn supposed that was because she was the mayor's daughter, but she remembered a story her Pa rambled on about when he was drinking that liquor thing about how, when General Pulaski became President Pulaski, a bunch of factories burned down in Pennacook. That is, every factory except the ones belonging to Mackenzie's father, who took office as Mayor not long after.
Ma quickly shut Pa up, but from the looks on her faces of her uncles and aunts, she wondered if that story might be the reason why everybody stayed away from Mackenzie, even the kids.
Because as mean as she is, Frances did have a point about Mackenzie and friends. I've never seen her down at the sandlot or at the junk store.
Well, maybe that was because Mackenzie had better things to play with. Mackenize, in that Mayor's mansion of hers the kids in town liked to stare at, had maids AND servants! And, if the rumors were true, she even had a monkey butler!
If she had a monkey, why would she go out to play with the kids in town? If Lynn had a monkey, would she still play with her family and friends? But Lynn had so many brothers and sisters and family members and friends to play with, while Mackenzie was just an only child. Surely she would want more friends than just a monkey and maids and servants? But if that's the case, why did she never go out to play with the kids in town?
Lynn wished she had someone there to give her those answers. So lost in her own thought, she ended up crashing into Mackenzie's backside when she stopped in a quieter part of the sidewalk.
"Why are you following me?" Mackenzie asked, her arms crossed.
"Because you saved me!" Lynn exclaimed. "I wanted to say thanks."
"It's nothing," Mackenzie answered in a huff. "You looked like you were in trouble so I stepped in. That's it. It could've been anyone."
"But it was me!" Lynn corrected. "My cousin gave me some nickels to spend. Let's get a root beer float!"
Mackenzie took a step back. "No...no, thanks. I'm going home."
Of course! That must mean-
"You really do have a monkey butler!" Lynn said.
"...no, I don't."
Oh.
"But if you don't have a monkey butler, why don't you ever come hang out with the kids in town?"
Mackenzie looked away. "Because none of the kids in town ever come to hang out with me."
Lynn took her by the hand. "That's alright! I'll be the first!"
And they were off, just like that.
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By age 11 and a half, Lynn and Mackenzie became good friends. By age 12, Mackenzie let Lynn sob into her chest when her cousin was shipped off to the Piscataquis logging camps. By age 13, Mackenzie taught Lynn how to read and write at the target level for that age. By age 14, Lynn let Mackenize sob into her chest when both Cambridge Middle School and Institute Middle School rejected her due to some sort of politics thing involving her father.
By age 15, Lynn waved Mackenzie off at Pennacook Station when she went to attend West Narragansett Technical Academy. By age 16, Lynn followed in her footsteps by unlocking the Rddhi and arriving at that school as a second year.
And now, she stood as part of Mackenzie's team, ready to take on the world if that's what her role model needed.